Welsh chef’s dream dish for Gordon Ramsay

SHE may not yet be out of catering school, but she has already fulfilled the dreams of many chefs twice her age.

SHE may not yet be out of catering school, but she has already fulfilled the dreams of many chefs twice her age.

Kelly Thomas, 19, will star alongside Gordon Ramsay tonight in his Channel 4 series, Ramsay’s Kitchen Nightmares, in which the three-Michelin-starred chef travels to the Fish and Anchor restaurant in Lampeter in an attempt to boost a business that is haemorrhaging cash.

And while Miss Thomas has been told to remain tight-lipped on the subject before it is broadcast, the Western Mail understands she was visited at her home by Ramsay where she cooked for him before being asked to help him on the show.

The Fish and Anchor is run by ex-boxer Mike Ciminera and his wife Caron, who are originally from the Rhondda. They emailed Ramsay earlier this year asking him to help their restaurant, which serves some of the best Welsh foods on the market, including organic Welsh Black beef, Cardigan Bay sea bass and Teifi salmon alongside cheaper pub grub.

Channel 4 said of tonight’s episode, “Mike, a self-taught cook, is a one-man pressure cooker in the kitchen as he struggles to accommodate a vast menu while Caron’s unique style of front-of-house management includes abusing the customers and her husband in equal measure.

“Every night they go 12 rounds with the local clientele who are fast deserting them to the tune of a £1,000 per week loss.

“Enter Gordon, who finds himself cast as marriage counsellor in a culinary battlefield. It’s a last-ditch attempt to reverse the restaurant’s disastrous reputation and put some love back into the kitchen as well as on plates.”

Even if the salvage operation is unsuccessful, Miss Thomas could well have laid the foundations for a future career as a celebrity chef, having already gathered some formidable television experience and high-profile contacts.

As well as working alongside the famously foul-mouthed Ramsay – who has restaurants in London, New York, Tokyo and Prague – she is also among the final contestants in S4C’s Casa Dudley, where she named Jean-Christophe Novelli as her favourite chef and the Stradey Park Hotel in Llanelli as her favourite restaurant.

“I’m only 19 but I’ve worked in catering for five years and one day want to own my own restaurant,” she said.

“I started out washing dishes in the Grannell Hotel in Llanwnnen and I’ve been observing chefs ever since. At 17, I realised I wanted it as a career so after A-levels I enrolled on a two-year hospitality supervision course at Coleg Sir Gar in Carmarthen.

“I’m also working in Hurst House in Laugharne [owned by former Men Behaving Badly star Neil Morrissey] under chef Scott Davis doing mains, sides and sauces.

“I like cooking main courses but it’s difficult to pick a favourite. If I had to pick one, I’d say poached salmon in a white wine, lemon and lime sauce served with red cabbage and leek.”

As for her relationship with the volatile Ramsay, Miss Thomas said, “We got on really well. He was his usual self but he wasn’t shouting with me. He is really down-to-earth and straightforward.

“I had been offered the chance to be in a television programme with a famous chef but I didn’t know he would be coming to Lampeter and I didn’t know it would be Gordon Ramsay.”

Miss Thomas’s tutor at Coleg Sir Gar, Linda Thomas, said, “Kelly is a very talented cook, hence her being on the show. That’s why we put her forward.

“She is a willing student always wanting to learn and is very enthusiastic.

“As for tonight, nobody knows what is happening and we haven’t pushed her because she has been told to keep it quiet.”

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